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Hello, My local Chamber of Commerce is hosting a series of Forums to engage the community and stretch beyond the norm of what Chamber's usually address. The first forum will be a multigenerational…Continue

This is the introduction to a new paper that I am working on. I am rewriting for my comprehensive exam but am happy to create a conversation on this work. The research is basically done. Note that…Continue

Hi Everyone!!My name is Martin Boerjan and I'm 23 years old. Currently I am a Master Student at the University of Tilburg. Having finished all my courses, my last challenge is to write a Master…Continue

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Brilliant questions, Dave! Not to divert energy, but to add to it, I realize we haven't mentioned the Wiser Together Online Cafe we're (Dave, Juanita, myself, Ashley, Ben and Sabine) co-hosting on New Models of Multi-Generational Collaboration and Leadership - December 9th!

Hi Dave and everyone…Thanks so much for these great questions. I'd love to know how others in this group are engaging multi-generational collaboration or social change? And are there others in this group who might like to help hostre or be a part of ongoing conversations--either in this space or in some other way (i.e. on-line Wiser Together Cafes)?

Hi everyone, here's a set of questions that I'm working with in the field of intergenerational collaboration for social change. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have in my quest for the juiciest question to live into.

WISER TOGETHER CORE QUESTION

How can we tap into the collective wisdom and creative force that comes to life when we are actively engaged & collaborating across generations?

FROM SCHILLER & COOPER (2012)

How can we create environments where diverse groups of people from different ages and stages of life, and different constellations of life experience, feel safe and empowered to make valuable contributions in their neighborhoods and the broader world community.

What is necessary in our internal construction and social design to enable people to genuinely feel included, empowered and able to participate at their fullest capacity.

How we can nurture relationships that are built on trust, mutual respect and shared purpose.

How we ensure that space is safe and generative for all of us – not just those of us who have convened the conversation.

MY QUICK “HEARTSTORM”

ACTION

How might we take intergenerational collective action for our collective problems such as climate change, population, immigration reform, government shutdown, media and economic instability?

What motivates people to take action intergenerationally?

How are the social movements of the 1960s and 70s echoed in recent movements such as the 1999 WTO protest in Seattle / Anti-Globalization movement and Occupy Wall Street?

EXAMPLES / WHAT MAKES IT WORK?

Where are thriving examples of intergenerational partnership? Esp community organizing for social change?

Where are intergenerational partnerships working effectively today, and what makes them work so well?

What causes intergenerational partnerships to work?

What are the most compelling stories of intergenerational and cross boundary coalition building?

What becomes possible when people collaborate inter-generationally?

COMMUNICATION

How might we carry out a national intergenerational conversation amongst Americans, given the broken state of the media and government?

What are effective forms of intergenerational communication and partnership in business, government, and civil society?

For any of you based in the Bay Area, writing to share about a Wiser Together event we're hosting at Impact Hub Oakland this Thursday from 6:30 - 9:30pm. We'd love to have you join us, or if you live elsewhere but have friends in the area, please feel free to share about this with them.

Beatriz, hello!!!
Thanks so much for your last post from Tom Friedman. It confirms my own feelings and thoughts and our multi-generational work becomes more important to continue each day. I will be in Cairo in October and then in Israel in early November to do some multi-gen Cafes, and I will post what I learn here.

Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

I REALIZE that I should be in Washington watching the debt drama there, but I’ve opted instead to be in Greece to observe the off-Broadway version. There are a lot of things about this global debt tragedy that you can see better from here, in miniature, starting with the raw plot, which no one has described better than the Carnegie Endowment scholar David Rothkopf: “When the cold war ended, we thought we were going to have a clash of civilizations. It turns out we’re having a clash of generations.”

Indeed, if there is one sentiment that unites the crises in Europe and America it is a powerful sense of “baby boomers behaving badly” — a powerful sense that the generation that came of age in the last 50 years, my generation, will be remembered most for the incredible bounty and freedom it received from its parents and the incredible debt burden and constraints it left on its kids.

It is no wonder that young Greeks reacted so harshly when their deputy prime minister, Theodoros Pangalos, referring to all the European Union loans and subsidies that propelled the Greek credit binge after 1981, said, “We ate it together” — meaning the people and the politicians. That was true of the baby boomer generation of Greeks, now in their 50s and 60s, and the baby boomer politicians. But those just coming of age today will never get a bite. They will just get a bill. And they know it.

You can see that when you walk around Athens’s central Syntagma Square, where young people now gather every evening to debate the crisis and register their protests at the future being imposed on them. The facades of banks around the square have been defaced, and flapping in the wind are two large banners. One says “IMF Employee of the Year” and has a picture of Prime Minister George Papandreou, and the other says “Goldman Sachs Employee of the Year” and pictures George Papaconstantinou, the former finance minister. (And these are the good guys, trying to fix the problem.) Nearby is a picture of a baby, saying: “Father, whose side were you on when they were selling our country?” And the more blunt: “Yield to rage,” “Class war, not national war,” and, finally, “Life — not just survival” — a message that seemed filled with foreboding about what the next decade is going to be like for young Greeks.

I was struck by one big similarity between what I heard in Tahrir Square in Cairo in February and what one hears in Syntagma Square today. It’s the word “justice.” You hear it more than “freedom.” That is because there is a deep sense of theft in both countries, a sense that the way capitalism played out in Egypt and Greece in the last decade was in its most crony-esque, rigged and corrupt deformation, letting some people get fantastically rich simply because of their proximity to power. So there is a hunger not just for freedom, but for justice. Or, as Rothkopf puts it, “not just for accounting, but for accountability.”

“There are no jokes about this crisis,” the Greek novelist Christos Chomenidis told me. “Everyone is in a bad temper. It feels like nearly everyone is against everyone. If the economic situation gets worse and worse, I am afraid for what can happen.”

The other day striking Greek cabdrivers tried to muscle their way into the minister of infrastructure’s office — only to discover that it was already full of his own ministry’s striking employees. Take a number, please.

That brings up another similarity between Greece and America: that the necessary may be impossible, that baby boomer politicians in the age of Twitter may not be up to addressing problems this big. The hole is too deep and power too fragmented. The only way out is by collective action — where ruling and opposition parties unite, share the pain and take the necessary steps. But that is not happening here or in Washington. There are Eric Cantors everywhere — reckless baby boomer politicians for whom no crisis is too serious to set aside political ambition and ideology.

But there is an adult lurking. China has been buying Spanish, Portuguese and Greek bonds to help stabilize these Chinese export markets. “These are delicate times, and we take a positive role,” Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, told the British newspaper The Guardian in January.

This is a role America used to play, but can no longer afford. Anyone who thinks that this economic crisis, if prolonged, won’t also hasten a global power shift has never heard of the Golden Rule: He who has the gold, sets the rules. “We are so used to the Americans providing the solutions for Europe and leading,” said Vassilis T. Karatzas, a Greek money manager. “But what happens when we are both in the same boat?”

What happens is that both the American and European dreams hang in the balance. Either we both put our nations on more sustainable growth paths — which requires cutting, taxing and investing for the future — or we’re looking at a world in which democracies are going to turn on themselves and fight over shrinking pies, with China having a growing say over how big the slices will be.